Literature Desk :
Poetry may be classified into three types: narrative, lyric, and dramatic. The lyric poems are concerned with the poet’s personal moods and ideas and based on his imaginative reflection on experience. Dramatic poetry, as its name indicates, either is in the form of, or uses some technique of, drama. The author may, for example, relate a story through dialogue, seeking to project the emotions and conflicts of the characters to his audience as a playwright does. Or a poem that emphasises a situation of conflict might be called dramatic. ‘What is that sound’ is a short dramatic poem. Narrative poetry also tells a story, but non-dramatically. Like a short story, it is constricted around a plot, develops characters and their relationships, and frequently uses description.
Narrative poetry was one of the first literary forms to take shape. The early Greeks epics of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are narrative poems about the wanderings and exploits of a hero. One of the oldest pieces of writing in Anglo-Saxon literature is a narrative poem; the story of Beowulf. Since men have always been interested in their past history and gloried in their national heroes, tales of valiant deeds were told around the evening fire by roving minstrels, long before the age of printing. These tales, then as now, stirred men’s hearts and gave them a sense of identity with the heroes of physical combats and brave deeds. Each storyteller, seeking to perfect his art, added new and more exciting events to his tale, until today it is often difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction in these old narratives. The storytellers of old were not only interested in entertaining their listeners, but also learned early the possibilities of teaching moral lessons through their verse. Thus, their tales often show the kind of behaviour admired in earlier times and the values held by the people of the age. From these stories that once entertained the knights and ladies of the Middle Ages came the folk epics, metrical romances, ballads, and literary epics of our past.
Idylls of the King
One of these folk epics concerned King Arthur, and his Knights of the Round Table. Historians generally agree that a Celtic leader by the name of Arturias once lived. About a century after the Roman legions withdrew from England in 410, Arthur struggled to defend Britain against the invading pagan Saxons and their allies. After his death (AD 538), his forces were finally pushed back into the Welsh mountains by the invaders, and the social order decayed into a semi-barbaric state. His exploits were first recorded by an early monk and later told and told again by a succession of writers and storytellers.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, the first to describe Arthur’s court and his famous teacher, Merlin the magician, was probably the most important. The most famous account of King Arthur was written by Sir Thomas Malory in Le Marte Darthur (The Death of Arthur).
In 1485, England’s first printer, William Caxton, published a volume called Le Marte Darthur in which Sir Thomas Malory drew together the various bright-coloured threads of the King Arthur legend. One perfect copy of this book still exists. Malory’s version is a racy, readable prose account of the Arthurian legend, the first to be written in colloquial English. This use of colloquial language has had a continuing influence on English literary style.
The story of Arthur, like the stories of such other heroes as Robin Hood and William Tell, grew more fantastic and idealistic with each retelling. The search of King Arthur’s knights for the Holy Grail, the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper according to legend, became symbolic of their quest for purity and righteousness. Arthur, himself representing the human conscience, became the center of a whole cycle of stories.
From the folk epic developed by many people about King Arthur, Alfred Tennyson fashioned a stately literary epic in twelve narrative poems. He had been captivated since his youth by the many accounts of life in Camelot, King Arthur’s capital city. After years of reflection and work, Tennyson created from the Arthurian legend a moral allegory entitled Idylls of the King. An idyll is a narrative which makes use of many descriptive word pictures. Tennyson’s Idylls, written in a highly ornamental style, are not only pictures of medieval life and the adventures of the Knights of the Round Table, but they are also symbolic images of timeless spiritual truths.
The chief change from the earlier versions of the legend is in the character of King Arthur. Tennyson makes him a high-minded hero who charges that each knight be faithful to one maiden only as he helps to build a noble society based on justice, love, and order. This characterisation is in marked contrast to the bloody, romantic Arthur idalised in 9th-century England. Each generation that told the story of Arthur told it in terms of its own dreams and ideals. Tennyson brought his Victorian idealism to his telling of the legend. However, he keeps these major themes that are common to all versions of the fabulous story:
1. Arthur was a brave and noble king who united Britain into a single realm;
2. Guinevere was his beautiful but faithless queen;
3. Merlin, a magician, was Arthur’s most trusted adviser;
4. Lancelot was the bravest knight;
5. Gareth was the most determined and starry-eyed of all the candidates for knighthood;
6. Sir Galahad was the most virtuous of the knights.
Both Malory’s version and Tennyson’s Idylls are marked by profound awareness of sin, of human frailty, and of personal responsibility, as well as of deep compassion for the retribution that weak humanity brings upon itself.
Tennyson uses the seasons of the year, symbolically, grouping the idylls loosely into spring, summer, autumn, and winter as he tells the story of chivalry beginning in spring, reaching full flower in summer, beginning to wither in autumn, and dying in winter. Although each idyll is ‘a separate story, many of the characters run through the entire epic.’ The Coming of Arthur, which opens the epic of twelve idylls, tells how Arthur subdued the twelve rebellious princes (of whom King Lot of Norway was chief) established his famous court in Camelot, and gathered about him a group of knights dedicated to deeds of daring and chivalry. This idyll also tells of King Arthur’s winning Guinevere as his queen.
The Passing of Arthur; the closing idyll, recounts the sad days in Camelot when the knights forget their vows and quarrel among themselves. The disloyal love of Lancelot and Queen Guinevere and the wicked plotting of Modred (Arthur’s nephew) lead to the disintegration of the court.
This tale tells of Lancelot going into exile in France, Guinevere entering a convent, and King Arthur dying as his noble dreams comes to an end.
In between these two tales Tennyson tells ten adventurous stories.
Gareth and Lynette; second of the idylls, represents Arthur’s famous Round Table when its glory is spreading through the land and noble youths from all countries seek to join King Arthur in his endeavours.
In Gareth and Lynette; set in the springtime, Gareth, the youngest son of Lot and Belli cent, promises his mother Belli cent, who tries to dissuade him from leaving home to enter Arthur’s court, that he will conceal his noble name. He also promises her to work in King Arthur’s kitchens for a year as a scullery boy to prove his desire to be a knight.
Gareth is a proud youth, and his mother hopes that this promise will keep him from the court. Gareth, however, goes to the court and works for twelve humiliating months in the scullery. His life is made particularly difficult by the taunts of Sir Kay, the King’s steward, who derisively calls the lad Beaumains because of his large hands.
At the end of the year, Beaumains is knighted by Sir Lancelot under his noble name, Gareth, and to prove his worthiness obtains the quest of Lynette, who seeks help from King Arthur and his court to liberate her sister Lyonors, held prisoner in Castle Perilous.
Poetry may be classified into three types: narrative, lyric, and dramatic. The lyric poems are concerned with the poet’s personal moods and ideas and based on his imaginative reflection on experience. Dramatic poetry, as its name indicates, either is in the form of, or uses some technique of, drama. The author may, for example, relate a story through dialogue, seeking to project the emotions and conflicts of the characters to his audience as a playwright does. Or a poem that emphasises a situation of conflict might be called dramatic. ‘What is that sound’ is a short dramatic poem. Narrative poetry also tells a story, but non-dramatically. Like a short story, it is constricted around a plot, develops characters and their relationships, and frequently uses description.
Narrative poetry was one of the first literary forms to take shape. The early Greeks epics of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are narrative poems about the wanderings and exploits of a hero. One of the oldest pieces of writing in Anglo-Saxon literature is a narrative poem; the story of Beowulf. Since men have always been interested in their past history and gloried in their national heroes, tales of valiant deeds were told around the evening fire by roving minstrels, long before the age of printing. These tales, then as now, stirred men’s hearts and gave them a sense of identity with the heroes of physical combats and brave deeds. Each storyteller, seeking to perfect his art, added new and more exciting events to his tale, until today it is often difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction in these old narratives. The storytellers of old were not only interested in entertaining their listeners, but also learned early the possibilities of teaching moral lessons through their verse. Thus, their tales often show the kind of behaviour admired in earlier times and the values held by the people of the age. From these stories that once entertained the knights and ladies of the Middle Ages came the folk epics, metrical romances, ballads, and literary epics of our past.
Idylls of the King
One of these folk epics concerned King Arthur, and his Knights of the Round Table. Historians generally agree that a Celtic leader by the name of Arturias once lived. About a century after the Roman legions withdrew from England in 410, Arthur struggled to defend Britain against the invading pagan Saxons and their allies. After his death (AD 538), his forces were finally pushed back into the Welsh mountains by the invaders, and the social order decayed into a semi-barbaric state. His exploits were first recorded by an early monk and later told and told again by a succession of writers and storytellers.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, the first to describe Arthur’s court and his famous teacher, Merlin the magician, was probably the most important. The most famous account of King Arthur was written by Sir Thomas Malory in Le Marte Darthur (The Death of Arthur).
In 1485, England’s first printer, William Caxton, published a volume called Le Marte Darthur in which Sir Thomas Malory drew together the various bright-coloured threads of the King Arthur legend. One perfect copy of this book still exists. Malory’s version is a racy, readable prose account of the Arthurian legend, the first to be written in colloquial English. This use of colloquial language has had a continuing influence on English literary style.
The story of Arthur, like the stories of such other heroes as Robin Hood and William Tell, grew more fantastic and idealistic with each retelling. The search of King Arthur’s knights for the Holy Grail, the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper according to legend, became symbolic of their quest for purity and righteousness. Arthur, himself representing the human conscience, became the center of a whole cycle of stories.
From the folk epic developed by many people about King Arthur, Alfred Tennyson fashioned a stately literary epic in twelve narrative poems. He had been captivated since his youth by the many accounts of life in Camelot, King Arthur’s capital city. After years of reflection and work, Tennyson created from the Arthurian legend a moral allegory entitled Idylls of the King. An idyll is a narrative which makes use of many descriptive word pictures. Tennyson’s Idylls, written in a highly ornamental style, are not only pictures of medieval life and the adventures of the Knights of the Round Table, but they are also symbolic images of timeless spiritual truths.
The chief change from the earlier versions of the legend is in the character of King Arthur. Tennyson makes him a high-minded hero who charges that each knight be faithful to one maiden only as he helps to build a noble society based on justice, love, and order. This characterisation is in marked contrast to the bloody, romantic Arthur idalised in 9th-century England. Each generation that told the story of Arthur told it in terms of its own dreams and ideals. Tennyson brought his Victorian idealism to his telling of the legend. However, he keeps these major themes that are common to all versions of the fabulous story:
1. Arthur was a brave and noble king who united Britain into a single realm;
2. Guinevere was his beautiful but faithless queen;
3. Merlin, a magician, was Arthur’s most trusted adviser;
4. Lancelot was the bravest knight;
5. Gareth was the most determined and starry-eyed of all the candidates for knighthood;
6. Sir Galahad was the most virtuous of the knights.
Both Malory’s version and Tennyson’s Idylls are marked by profound awareness of sin, of human frailty, and of personal responsibility, as well as of deep compassion for the retribution that weak humanity brings upon itself.
Tennyson uses the seasons of the year, symbolically, grouping the idylls loosely into spring, summer, autumn, and winter as he tells the story of chivalry beginning in spring, reaching full flower in summer, beginning to wither in autumn, and dying in winter. Although each idyll is ‘a separate story, many of the characters run through the entire epic.’ The Coming of Arthur, which opens the epic of twelve idylls, tells how Arthur subdued the twelve rebellious princes (of whom King Lot of Norway was chief) established his famous court in Camelot, and gathered about him a group of knights dedicated to deeds of daring and chivalry. This idyll also tells of King Arthur’s winning Guinevere as his queen.
The Passing of Arthur; the closing idyll, recounts the sad days in Camelot when the knights forget their vows and quarrel among themselves. The disloyal love of Lancelot and Queen Guinevere and the wicked plotting of Modred (Arthur’s nephew) lead to the disintegration of the court.
This tale tells of Lancelot going into exile in France, Guinevere entering a convent, and King Arthur dying as his noble dreams comes to an end.
In between these two tales Tennyson tells ten adventurous stories.
Gareth and Lynette; second of the idylls, represents Arthur’s famous Round Table when its glory is spreading through the land and noble youths from all countries seek to join King Arthur in his endeavours.
In Gareth and Lynette; set in the springtime, Gareth, the youngest son of Lot and Belli cent, promises his mother Belli cent, who tries to dissuade him from leaving home to enter Arthur’s court, that he will conceal his noble name. He also promises her to work in King Arthur’s kitchens for a year as a scullery boy to prove his desire to be a knight.
Gareth is a proud youth, and his mother hopes that this promise will keep him from the court. Gareth, however, goes to the court and works for twelve humiliating months in the scullery. His life is made particularly difficult by the taunts of Sir Kay, the King’s steward, who derisively calls the lad Beaumains because of his large hands.
At the end of the year, Beaumains is knighted by Sir Lancelot under his noble name, Gareth, and to prove his worthiness obtains the quest of Lynette, who seeks help from King Arthur and his court to liberate her sister Lyonors, held prisoner in Castle Perilous.
